Hacker News: sbalea

New comment by sbalea in "Winter & Cold Weather EV Range Loss in 7,000 Cars"

sbalea — Mon, 19 Dec 2022 21:42:51 +0000

If you need a new vehicle, the you can certainly go with a quality EV. I live in NJ, it gets cold here in winter, with temps dipping in teens and single digits in Jan/Feb. Don't have a garage either. As long as you can plug your car in overnight, there are absolutely no issues. Range does drop a somewhat in winter, but as long as you're aware of it you can work around it. You don't need chargers in your area, your home will be the place where you charge the most, just make sure you have a high power outlet/wall charger installed at your home. Regular 120V outlets are not really feasible unless you're driving very little. 3d party chargers matter only when you go on road trips/vacations. That being said, maybe you can hold on to your car a couple more years, let the market cool down and EV offerings improve.

New comment by sbalea in "Polar Express – How Airlines are plotting a new-route to Asia"

sbalea — Mon, 21 Mar 2022 14:56:17 +0000

To your first point, you cannot operate a commercial airliner from a carrier, for a multitude technical reasons. That being said, I seem to remember that, back in the day, the Navy would post ships at various remote points in the Pacific ocean to be there in case airliners had to ditch. To your second point, yes, to some extent it would be more efficient to make refueling stops, but you need conveniently located airports, and all those landings and takeoffs add to the duration of the flight and to the stress on the airplane, so it has to be balanced.

New comment by sbalea in "Apple announces 27-inch 5K Studio Display"

sbalea — Wed, 09 Mar 2022 18:59:04 +0000

Funny, I am typing this on a Mac connected to an MST Dell 5k display....MacOS supported this setup since at least 2015, when I bought my display.

New comment by sbalea in "Trudeau Invokes Emergencies Act"

sbalea — Tue, 15 Feb 2022 15:10:37 +0000

I don't think you understand the concept of free speech. It allows you the right to express your opinion without fear of government oppression. It does not allow you to yell your opinion through a megaphone, in front of my house, at all hours of day and night.

New comment by sbalea in "Will Xi Move on Taiwan?"

sbalea — Thu, 16 Sep 2021 14:23:47 +0000

Worth noting that there was no Russian presence in Romania at the fall of communism back in '89. Russian military withdrew peacefully starting in '58 through early 60s.

New comment by sbalea in "Ask HN: Where can I live off 1k USD per month?"

sbalea — Fri, 27 Aug 2021 06:15:20 +0000

+1 on this. Gorgeous landscape, very fast and cheap internet and cell networks. Decent number of people speaking decent English, especially amongst the urban youth. Not as cheap as it used to be, but still cheaper than Western Europe.

New comment by sbalea in "Ask HN: Where can I live off 1k USD per month?"

sbalea — Fri, 27 Aug 2021 06:09:30 +0000

To be honest, you'll most likely encounter corruption if you intend to operate a business, especially if said business has anything to do with any level of government. As an ordinary resident you might have to deal with bureaucracy, but that's not different than in any other European country. I might have a rosy picture of the state of things, since I only come here on vacations and to visit family, but I was born and raised here and I think I can see significant improvements on this front.

New comment by sbalea in "Why electric cars will take over sooner than you think"

sbalea — Tue, 01 Jun 2021 17:14:41 +0000

My house has 100amps service and I was able to install a 14-50 outlet (240V/50amps) which allows me to charge at sustained 32amps. It all depends on what other load do you need to handle, for me the only other significant load was the A/C, everything else is gas powered. Don't even have to go that high, even a 240V/30amps outlet (24 amps sustained) will still charge a car in a reasonable amount of time. Keep in mind that you will rarely need to charge from 0 to 100%, most of the time will be a fraction of that. For me it's usually 70% to 90%, but, of course, YMMV.

New comment by sbalea in "AstraZeneca vaccine safe and effective in U.S., Chile, Peru trials"

sbalea — Mon, 22 Mar 2021 17:46:51 +0000

Coronaviruses are not really novel, about 15% of common colds are caused by 4 different strains that are endemic in humans.

New comment by sbalea in "100Mbps uploads and downloads should be US broadband standard, senators say"

sbalea — Fri, 05 Mar 2021 15:06:17 +0000

1. I am tired of hearing this rehashed over and over again. Yes, overall density in US is lower than most countries in Europe, but even high density places like New Jersey still have plenty of spots with only one, overpriced, shitty provider. For example, I am paying $98/mo for 400/40mbps cable, and that's my only wired option. My dad's country side house at the foothills of the Romanian Carpathian mountains gets 900/450mbps FTTH service for $10/mo. 2. Back in the late 90s, both Romania and my NJ neighborhood were at the same point, twisted copper phone lines and cable TV service over coax cable. Yet 20+ years later, the differences are stark. Don't get me started on cell phone service :)

New comment by sbalea in "Tesla suffers network outage disabling vehicles’ mobile app"

sbalea — Wed, 23 Sep 2020 22:09:09 +0000

You can buy fobs for 3/Y, for extra $$$

New comment by sbalea in "The AN-225: How the Cold War created the world's largest airplane"

sbalea — Thu, 23 Jul 2020 14:22:29 +0000

They cross-train for AN-124, which is quite similar, though obviously smaller.

New comment by sbalea in "The Zen of Erlang (2016)"

sbalea — Mon, 20 Jul 2020 12:58:35 +0000

In Scala/Akka, you could use the ask operator and compose the resulting Futures, something like this:

  for {
    a <- aProviderActor ? gimmeA
    b <- bProviderActor ? gimmeB
    aPlusB <- adderActor ? (add, a, b)
  } yield aPlusB

New comment by sbalea in "Ask HN: Who regrets choosing Elixir?"

sbalea — Sun, 24 May 2020 12:55:31 +0000

If the problem you're solving can be easily split into many independent, low volume, maybe long running, communication oriented tasks, you owe it to yourself to look into the Erlang ecosystem. Think handling signaling for calls, chat connections, inputs from millions of IoT endpoints.

New comment by sbalea in "Ask HN: Who regrets choosing Elixir?"

sbalea — Sun, 24 May 2020 12:51:02 +0000

Hot swapping support in Erlang is first class, but even with that, it is not an easy feat to accomplish in large systems. Which is why, in my experience, people tend to avoid it if they can do without it. Systems i have worked with either had scheduled downtime periods or one could easily take down a node for upgrades without impacting the general availability of the system. In such cases, there is no real incentive to invest time and energy in managing hot swapping. But if you absolutely need all parts of your system be up 24/7, Erlang has the best story I've heard so far.

New comment by sbalea in "New 13-inch MacBook Pro"

sbalea — Tue, 05 May 2020 11:04:16 +0000

I was concerned about that myself, but so far so good. I suspect the ability to charge on either side makes a difference. I usually plug in on whatever side is closer to a wall and out of the way. Combined with all the other usb-c/tb benefits, i think the tradeoff is worth it.

New comment by sbalea in "Why are Soviet math textbooks so hardcore in comparison to US textbooks? (2017)"

sbalea — Wed, 22 Apr 2020 13:46:04 +0000

To add more color, the top few high schools in Bucharest at the time were all highly competitive, with low % admission rates. So the student body was naturally skewed towards more academically inclined students. In a sense, if you made it in you were more or less a "nerd" compared to the general population.

New comment by sbalea in "My own private Iceland"

sbalea — Fri, 25 Oct 2019 14:45:07 +0000

For an English speaker, there's no problem. We visited about 10 years ago and the one person not speaking any English was an old lady keeping a convenience store somewhere in the north-western corner of the island.

New comment by sbalea in "Costco gained a cult following by breaking every rule of retail"

sbalea — Mon, 14 Oct 2019 14:00:32 +0000

Maybe this is a New Jersey thing, but here you don't need to be a Costco member to buy gasoline at Costco stations. It's also not that good of a deal, at maybe 10-15 cents less than regular gas stations. Sometimes it's just not worth braving the gas queues just for $1.5 in savings.

New comment by sbalea in "EASA Insists on Testing Boeing 737 Max Itself Before Lifting Ban"

sbalea — Fri, 06 Sep 2019 22:43:19 +0000

It's accurate. Just got back from spending a few weeks at my dad's country house that's wired with 940/450mbps fiber. No problems remote working from there, except, of course, time zone differences. Here's the ISP link, in Romanian unfortunately: https://www.digiromania.ro/servicii/internet/internet-fix/fi.... The price is 40 Lei / month, which is approximately $9.5 at current exchange rates.